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Jayne Dawson: Jolly good Delia
I don't know about you, but I currently have a firm date with BBC2 on Monday night.
If you haven't you're missing out on something "jolly good", just to slip into Delia-speak for a moment.
For it is she, the nation's domestic science teacher, who is filling the 8.30pm slot and me and my mate Linda, for two, are very happy about this, since we have been tasting the results of Delia's genius at each other's houses for a long time now.
The series is a bit of a cop-out in a sense since it's mainly old footage linked together by bits of present-day Delia – who by the way is ageing very well, in my opinion.
At 69, she still has pretty much the same engaging face and manner that have made her so popular for five decades.
This using up of the leftovers, so to speak, was possibly conceived to eke out the BBC budget, but for real Delia fans the repetition is a bonus since it allows us to simultaneously see bits of Delia we missed during the years before we knew where the kitchen was, to laugh at fashions in food which come and go almost as fast as the fashions on the catwalk, and to marvel at our relatively recent introduction to foods that are now considered mundane.
Mostly, we are pretty much blase about all foods now. We might never have cooked them, but we have eaten them in a ready meal or a takeaway or seen them in the world foods section in the supermarket or watched someone on telly chucking them around a chopping board.
But, my, did it used to be different.
Here's an example of the impact a new food could have back in the mists of the early 80s, not from Delia but from me.
Back then, my mum and dad took their first big holiday abroad to America, and it was such a success that they announced on their return that their marriage was to be no more.
This news was greeted by me and my sisters with silence, pretty much.
Not because we were stunned or dumfounded or even surprised, but because our attention was focused on the banana chips my mum had brought back with her.
Crispy slices of banana! Sliced and deep fried a bit like crisps! Only not crisps! Imagine!
We were entranced. Amazed. Delighted.
We were like the Cratchit family on Christmas Day, except it was banana chips, not a goose and it was 1980 not 1843 and there wasn't exactly the same sense of family cheer, if you know what I mean.
But still, we were very grateful for the amazingly different food.
I can't even think what our reaction would have been if we had been presented with parsnip chips or carrot chips or any of the varieties now available at a supermarket near you, but I'm thinking deep breaths, a sit down and a glass of water would most likely have been involved.
What? Oh yes, the divorce went ahead.
But it wasn't just banana chips that were bursting all over our taste buds back then, as Delia is now demonstrating.
We've already seen her flambeing her way through the sixties, cooking everything so long as it was brown during the 70s and, this week, she was reminding us that there was a time when pasta wasn't just the boring, beige backdrop to our weekly menus.
There was a time when pasta was so new that Delia was having to show us how to eat it.
Pasta might be among the blandest of foods on the planet, but gosh it gave an exciting message about lifestyle back in the 1980s.
A dish of spaghetti carbonara had you marked out as a person on the edge of style.
It told the entire world that you probably had the kind of fabulous house where the curtains and cushion covers matched. And had frills.
By the way, Delia's advice for getting difficult lengths of pasta into your mouth was to get some on your fork and twirl. But then, horror of horrors she said that if you found that difficult then it was okay to twirl the fork against a spoon.
I need to point out here that actually the spoon thing isn't acceptable anymore. Take it from me, the fork and slurp method is the only way to go with pasta in 2010.
But I'm not blaming Delia, this was an extract from her seminal 1980s work How to Cook which was indeed a fantastic series and one which could well stand a prime time remake I feel, with an update on the spaghetti-eating issue.
Next week we're on to the '90s when Delia introduced us to her Christmas and her winter and summer collections. All of them on my shelves at home.
And if you think spaghetti was mind-blowing, I for one am hoping she will relive the cranberry crisis – the moment the nation ran out of the things having being told by Delia that they didn't just come in jars like jam. It will be like the banana chips moment all over again.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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